In the Assembly at Albany, he presently made discoveries.  He learned something about the crooked politicians whom the stay-at-home reformers had denounced from afar.  He found that the Assembly had in it many good men, a larger number who were neither good nor bad, but went one way or another just as things happened to influence them at the moment.  Finally, there were some bad men indeed.  He found that the bad men were not always the poor, the uneducated, the men who had been brought up in rough homes, lacking in refinement.  On the contrary, he found some extremely honest and useful men who had had exactly such unfavorable beginnings.

Also, he soon discovered that there were, in and out of politics, some men of wealth, of education, men who boasted that they belonged to the “best families,” who were willing to be crooked, or to profit from other men’s crooked actions.  He soon announced this discovery, which naturally made such men furious with him.  They pursued him with their hatred all his life.  Some people really think that great wealth makes crime respectable, and if it is pointed out to a wealthy but dishonest man, that he is merely a common thief, and if in addition, the fact is proved to everybody’s satisfaction, his anger is noticeable.

Along with his serious work in the Assembly, Roosevelt found that there was a great deal of fun in listening to the debates on the floor, or the hearings in committees.  One story, which he tells, is of two Irish Assemblymen, both of whom wished to be leader of the minority.  One, he calls the “Colonel,” the other, the “Judge.”  There was a question being discussed of money for the Catholic Protectory, and somebody said that the bill was “unconstitutional.”  Mr. Roosevelt writes: 

The Judge, who knew nothing—­of the constitution, except that it was continually being quoted against all of his favorite projects, fidgetted about for some time, and at last jumped up to know if he might ask the gentleman a question.  The latter said “Yes,” and the Judge went on, “I’d like to know if the gintleman has ever personally seen the Catholic Protectoree?” “No, I haven’t,” said his astonished opponent.  “Then, phwat do you mane by talking about its being unconstitootional?  It’s no more unconstitootional than you are!” Then turning to the house with slow and withering sarcasm, he added, “The throuble wid the gintleman is that he okkipies what lawyers would call a kind of a quasi-position upon this bill,” and sat down amid the applause of his followers.

His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained altogether too much glory from the encounter, and after the nonplussed countryman had taken his seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the elated Judge, looked at him majestically for a moment, and said, “You’ll excuse my mentioning, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down knows more law in a wake than you do in a month; and more than that, Mike Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin’ Latin on the flure of this House, when you don’t know the Alpha and OMAYGA of the language!” and back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated submission behind him. [Footnote:  “American Ideals,” p. 93.]